“I would say like a baby,” I said, “but honestly, more like someone who played yesterday then flew across time zones.”
“Mmm, and then I wore you out.” Miles opened his eyes, lids still heavy. “Do I need to caffeinate you? No, you don’t do that, do you. You’re a perfect puritan. I don’t know how you manage all the travel without coffee.”
Before I could think of a clever retort, my stomach rumbled. “Coffee I can do without. Food on the other hand . . .”
“Oh, shit! I didn’t even feed you last night.” He looked stricken. “I’m a terrible host.”
“You’re fine,” I said, nuzzling him back. “If I’d been starving, I would have asked. I got something at the airport on the way.”
“Gross, airport food. I can do better than that.”
With a groan of effort, Miles rolled over and levered himself off the bed, gloriously naked in the morning sunlight. Leaving hisclothes from the night before tangled amongst mine, he snatched up a pair of black house pants from a chair and slipped them on. They were thin and low-slung and did nothing to hide his morning erection, and were somehow crueller to my self-control than if he’d just walked around naked.
“What do you like for breakfast?” he asked, running a hand through his hair and leaving it messier for the intervention. “I wasn’t sure, so my housekeeper bought lots of stuff.”
Because in all the time we’d spent together there had been plenty of lunches and dinners, but I could count on the fingers of one hand the nights we’d spent in each other’s bed. Nights always followed by creeping away rather than sticking around to eat.
“Whatever you’re having is fine,” I said, pulling myself up after him. “I really am very easy.”
“Easy, huh?” He eyed me appreciatively, gaze trailing down my body as I got to my feet. “I admit the urge to give breakfast a miss and eat you instead is quite strong. But you’re starving so I must be good.”
“Regretfully, yes.”
Miles groaned and dragged his gaze away with an effort. “Right, well you’d better put clothes on or I will not be held responsible for your lack of sustenance.”
He walked out on the words, leaving me to drag on my discarded clothes because I couldn’t even remember where my bag was let alone what I had shoved into it in my hurry.
Out in his perfect, showpiece kitchen, Miles was gathering ingredients in front of a blender, while behind him a coffee machine made the strange moaning gurgles that came from producing boiling water. With sunlight pouring in through tall windows and plants everywhere, it was another of those entirely Miles snapshots I wanted to burn into my retinas.
“Smoothie,” he said, gesturing to the blender. “My usual breakfast because I can take it around with me if I have things to do. Do you want one?”
“Sure.”
“What do you want in it?”
“Whatever you’re having,” I said, and when he gave me a sceptical look, I added, “easy, remember? You feed me, I’ll eat. I’m really not picky.”
Miles gave a facial shrug. “All right. I’ll remember that.”
Having rescued his black coffee from the machine, he set it on the bench and started throwing things into the blender—spinach, yoghurt, oats, berries, banana—all with the ease of much practice, hardly seeming to think and certainly not measuring. When he was done, he handed me a large glass.
While I settled on a stool at the bench to drink mine, he walked around checking his plants. He touched the dirt of some, examined the leaves of others, or lifted pots entirely as though he could tell something important from the weight.
“You’re such a plant gay,” I said, grinning as I watched him.
Miles shot me a disdainful look over his shoulder. “Plant gay? Pretty sure that’s not a valid category of gay.”
“Why not? We don’t always have to categorise by kink, do we?”
“Guess not. What kind of gay are you then?”
I paused mid-sip. “I don’t know. A reading gay?”
“I read now too.”
“I noticed that.”
The look he shot me owned a hint of suspicion. “Did you?”
